Iris recognition is one of the most accurate and widely popular methods in biometric authentication. It is a contactless method that uses digital images of the detail-rich iris texture to create a genuine discrete biometric signature for the authentication. The images may be acquired by near infrared (NIR) light illumination of human eyes. Conventional iris recognition technology is largely based on iris image processing, feature extraction, encoding and matching techniques that were pioneered by John Daugman. However, much of the conventional techniques may not result in compact processing and/or storage of iris data, and moreover, does not leverage on other aspects of iris data to improve encoding.